26 July 2010

Office 2010 is a challenge for developers, but it also gives new possibilities. kalmstrom.com Business Solutions will of course not only support the new Office version but also take advantage of the benefits it offers. Today we released a new version of HelpDesk OSP, the kalmstrom.com issue tracking application for Outlook and SharePoint or Office Live.

In the new HelpDesk OSP the Outlook buttons are no longer hidden under the Add-ins tab but shown under the Home tab. Our technicians have made use of the possibility to create two buttons in one, so that users with several SharePoint lists can easily choose among them by clicking the little arrow to the left on the button. If you have one list you just click the button.

I recommend Members who have already started to use Office 2010 or soon will do it to upgrade their installations. I am sure you will like the new design with fewer buttons! Also the manual has been updated of course,

22 July 2010

The kalmstrom.com team uses HelpDesk OSP for support cases. We also use this incident management tool in other situations where e-mails need to be organized and discussed among us, for example to sort and comment on job applications.

Since the team members live and work far apart in different countries, we use OWA for the e-mail and have HelpDesk OSP installed on a server where Outlook is running 24/7. We can always access the tickets from our smartphones, which is a big advantage for those of us who travel a lot.

Even if we don't use all the possibilities SharePoint gives - because we don't need them - we are very satisfied with our software and with having this connection between our e-mail and our intranet. Since we often get questions about how to use HelpDesk OSP for a distributed group, we have made a faq that explains how we have set it up. Welcome to read more about our way of using HelpDesk OSP!

13 July 2010

The Administrator manual for Calendar Browser, has been updated. This Resource management tool from kalmstrom.com Business Solution has been on the market for more than ten years, and even if the manual just like the application has been updated many times during that period, it was time for a new review again. This time we took help from our trainee, Niklas Svensson, who gave us valuable input.

During the early years nearly all users installed Calendar Browser in a public folder and also used public folder calendars for the resource descriptions. Today the situation has changed. Even if Microsoft has promised to support public folders for a long time ahead, some users prefer to use mailboxes. Therefore we have taken extra care to explain of the differences between use of public folders and mailboxes, both when it comes to installation and resource calendars.

Also with the new manual public folders are easier to manage, while mailbox installation and calendar creation require a deeper knowledge of Microsoft Exchange. Welcome to download the Calendar Browser Admin manual in DOC or PDF format!

07 July 2010

Today kalmstrom.com has released an update of PF HelpDesk V11 that is fully optimized for Office 2010, 32 bit version. The PF HelpDesk buttons are no longer hidden under the Add-Ins tab.

When you open Outlook three PF HelpDesk buttons – Manual Conversion of e-mails into tickets, Open Ticket and Shortcut to the PF HelpDesk Outlook folder – are shown under the Home tab of the ribbon, see the first image above. These are the buttons you may need outside PF HelpDesk, when working with e-mails, so it is convenient to always have them at hand.

When you open the PF HelpDesk Outlook folder, more buttons are shown in the ribbon, refer to the second image above. These are the buttons you may need when working inside PF HelpDesk, and if you have used PF HelpDesk with earlier Office versions you will recognize them as the buttons of the right hand toolbar. Members of kalmstrom.com Community are very welcome to upgrade their installations!

Office 2010 64 bit will have to wait, but note that PF HelpDesk just like our other products works on all 64 bit operating systems. It is just the Office version we don’t support. Next in turn for Office 2010 optimization is TimeCard Workgroup and after that Calendar Browser. I will report back to you about the progress!